| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Pool in the Desert by Sara Jeanette Duncan: her fancy her life's only budding towards the sun. Her patience
lasted through six years, which was four years longer than any
doctor had given Frederick Prendergast to live; but when one last
morning she found an empty bed, and learned that Number 1596 had
been discharged in his coffin, she rose from the shock with the
sense of a task fully performed and a well-developed desire to see
what else there might be in the world.
She announced her intention of travelling for a year or two with a
maid, and her family expressed the usual acquiescence. It would
help her, they said, to 'shake it off'; but they said that to one
another. They were not aware--and it would have spoiled an ideal
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Protagoras by Plato: will be gratified and not pleased; for gratification is of the mind when
receiving wisdom and knowledge, but pleasure is of the body when eating or
experiencing some other bodily delight. Thus spoke Prodicus, and many of
the company applauded his words.
Hippias the sage spoke next. He said: All of you who are here present I
reckon to be kinsmen and friends and fellow-citizens, by nature and not by
law; for by nature like is akin to like, whereas law is the tyrant of
mankind, and often compels us to do many things which are against nature.
How great would be the disgrace then, if we, who know the nature of things,
and are the wisest of the Hellenes, and as such are met together in this
city, which is the metropolis of wisdom, and in the greatest and most
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